Community Service

The Arvada Sunrise Rotary Club addresses both local, national, and international needs supported by a variety of other Rotary Clubs, Rotary International, and other service-oriented organizations. 

Specific Programs supported by our club

Read to Me

Currently the Club sponsors 11 elementary schools in Arvada with a program designed to encourage parents to read to their children on a nightly basis.  The Club provides the books for classrooms in grades kindergarten through second grade and helps teachers and administrators facilitate and encourage parents and their children to read the books throughout the year.                      

Friendship Bridge

Provide financial support to help women in Guatemala by providing small renewable loans they can use to start their own businesses, such as materials to grow corn, materials to make baskets, yarn to weave clothes, etc.

Cultural Exchange

The Club currently sponsors students from Japan and Austria to study for a short time in the United States.

Sister Cities Project

This Project sent three containers of essential medical supplies and equipment, worth $1.5 million, to Arvada’s Sister City, Kyzlonda, Kazhakstan.  The supplies and equipment went to clinics and hospitals throughout the city and will save many lives.

Somoa Project

Provide funds and financial support to rebuild an elementary school damaged by a typhoon.

Oldonyonokie Water Project

The Oldonyonyokie Project provided 60,000 liters of capacity for harvesting rainwater from the roofs of the school and community center buildings. This enabled the Masaii natives in the desert area of southern Kenya to collect water for use during the long periods of drought which happens twice a year. Many lives have been saved because of this project. Arvada Sunrise Rotary also provided solar power to the community clinic so the villagers could have the necessary refrigeration to store vaccines, medicines and snake-bite serum.

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards

RYLA is a leadership training program for promising young community leaders.  The young leaders are chosen for their leadership potential and attend an all-expense-paid seminar, camp, or workshop to discuss leadership skills and put those skills into practice. 

Karatina Hospital Water Project

Karatina Hospital in central Kenya treats 400 outpatients, 216 in-patients, has 300 staff, and is a referral hospital for 400,000 people. It relies on the city water supply, which is often unavailable due to equipment breakdowns and is rationed when it does work. The system was designed for a population of 25,000 when it was built 40 years ago and there are now 75,000 people in the area.  This was a hospital without water. Our project is to sink a bore-hole and pump water to an existing storage container so the hospital will have a continuous source of clean water. Work is now underway and the project will be completed by the end of 2007.

The Itiati Village Water Project

The water supply for Itiati Village comes from a glacier stream that has been reduced to a trickle during the dry seasons of the year. Communities have developed upstream and the run-off from Mount Kenya has been reduced as a result of changing weather patterns. ASR water project includes drilling a bore-hole, building storage tanks and connecting to the existing distribution system 7,800 people, a dispensary, six schools, two coffee processing plants and numerous cattle. The project is approved and work should be completed within three months.

Library Projects

Fiction, non-fiction and reference books have been collected and shipped to Kenya. Libraries have been started at two primary schools and four more are scheduled to be started in 2008. Children. teachers, parents and representatives of Arvada Sunrise Rotary work together to change an empty room into an appealing place for children to read and learn. Floors are refinished, walls are painted, furniture constructed and the room is decorated with pictures, charts, and children's drawings.

2007-2008 Projects

Plans for the coming year include assisting with solar power for a Masaii dispensary, providing sanitation facilities for a slum in Uganda, and additional water projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.